Calling Marc Rich the “Babe Ruth of concealment,” New York’s tax commissioner issued a warrant yesterday to recover more than $137 million in back taxes from the financier.

Commissioner Arthur Roth said the whopping bill, which includes $97 million in interest, is based on the billionaire’s profit from allegedly defrauding two companies he controlled while a New York resident in the early 1980s.

Rich, the central figure in the Clinton pardon scandal, is liable for nearly $27 million in back taxes for the years 1980-82, as well as $13.5 million in penalties and $97.4 million in interest, Roth said.

“It is now time for him to pay the piper,” the commissioner said.

Roth, citing tax-secrecy laws, declined to comment on whether the state would pursue assets held by his ex-wife, Denise.

He said the state could place liens on any assets she still controls that were jointly held by the couple at the time the fraud was committed.

Among the properties she owns in New York state are a condo on East 76th Street and a home in Southampton, L.I. It isn’t clear whether her ex-husband had a stake in either.

Roth said the state hadn’t filed civil litigation previously because it might have jeopardized the federal probe of Marc Rich.

But President Bill Clinton’s controversial pardon frees the state to pursue his assets, he said.

Clinton has defended the pardon, saying Marc Rich should have faced civil, not criminal, charges.

Roth said the assets would have to be located quickly because of Marc Rich’s skill at concealing them. “Rich has a long history of shifting and hiding assets,” the commissioner said.

“Marc Rich is to asset-concealment what Babe Ruth was to baseball.”

Two of Rich’s companies, Marc International, Ltd. and Marc Rich and Company AG, each pleaded guilty in 1984 to 38 federal criminal counts in a scheme involving the illegal trading of crude oil.

The firms settled the case by paying $150 million, but a personal criminal case against Marc Rich and his partner, Pincus Green, remained on the books.

Rich’s lawyer, Jack Quinn, who appeared yesterday before the congressional panel investigating the pardons, could not be reached for comment. Quinn has said his client is ready to return from Switzerland to face possible civil penalties.